Posted on 04/07/2021 8:04:00 AM PDT by Heartlander
Major League Baseball declared commonsense election reforms to be against its values last week. The sports league decided to move its summer All-Star game from Atlanta after Georgia’s legislature passed an election integrity bill. Joe Biden and his media allies claim the bill is “Jim Crow on steroids,” even though it merely requires voter ID for mail-in ballots and other sensible changes. This disinformation campaign persuaded the MLB and other corporations to attack the Georgia bill, with the pro sports league taking the extra step of pulling the All-Star game.
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a press statement. Many teams, including the Florida Marlins and Baltimore Orioles, applauded the league’s decision. The MLB sent a loud and clear message to conservatives: we despise your values and we will use our power to further Democratic Party objectives.
There’s only one proper response to the MLB: boycott ’em.
Some conservatives scoff at the idea of boycotts. They don’t like politics intruding into their pastime, but that doesn’t mean they will do anything about the intrusion. Some just want to enjoy the sport because it connects them with family, friends, and their local communities. It’s a lifetime interest and it defines who they are. It’s just not something they want to give up, no matter how much they disagree with the MLB’s decision.
This is an understandable reaction. If conservatives boycotted everything that conflicted with their opinions, we would not be able to buy most essential products and we would have few options for entertainment. But this is not about protesting people who merely disagree with us. This is about sending a message to a giant corporation that feels it can take conservative fans for granted as it stomps on our faces.
Conservatives should have done this last year when the league turned itself into a propaganda arm of Black Lives Matter. BLM was stenciled on pitchers’ mounds, several players wore BLM paraphernalia, and teams took a knee during the national anthem. Several teams took the additional step of outwardly endorsing BLM and its sinister agenda. The Boston Red Sox put up a “Black Lives Matter” billboard right next to their stadium. The Tampa Bay Rays issued tweets that displayed a black power fist, complained about “systemic racism,” and demanded murder charges for the cops who shot Breonna Taylor.
Later in the season, multiple teams boycotted play to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (It turned out Blake was armed and police were cleared of wrongdoing.)
Some conservatives did turn off the MLB, as league ratings tanked last year. But the league, unfortunately, didn’t get the message.
The All-Star game pullout is an escalation because it’s intended to financially damage its intended targets. The MLB presents itself as a weapon liberals may use to punish their enemies. This is part of the league’s “values,” and there are no brakes on where it could be used next. By this precedent, the MLB could seek to punish red states for anything that runs afoul of progressive orthodoxy. The league could pull events from states that defund sanctuary cities or zealously enforce immigration law. The league could demand states change the name of Columbus Day to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” or else lose their perks. (The NFL moved the 1993 Super Bowl from Arizona over the state’s refusal to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.) The possibilities are endless . . . unless conservatives make Major League Baseball pay.
MLB feels it has to cater to liberal interests. The league believes that no matter what it does, conservatives will stick with it. And revenue depends on that bet. MLB fans lean Republican, a fact that sits awkwardly with the league’s current trajectory. Based on its latest actions, one would believe baseball fans are predominately Media Matters staffers. Everything the MLB does is designed to appease one demographic: affluent white liberals. The majority of its actual fans can go to hell.
The logical response is to tell the league to go to hell. Turn off the TV. Don’t buy any more MLB merchandise. Don’t subject yourself to the indignities of going to a baseball game. It’s rich for a league to say voter ID is racist while requiring fans to offer full proof of vaccination and negative antibody tests just to attend a game. The league should be boycotted for that reason alone. If you’re willing to endure all this and sit outside, double-masked, to watch the Mets lose, then the MLB is right to not respect you.
Conservatives will only win if they can subject institutions like the MLB to serious pain. The league needs to know it can’t stick its thumb on the political process and go unscathed. It needs to face serious consequences. Make those ratings plummet even further, make merchandise sales evaporate, and make ticket sales nonexistent. Republican lawmakers should follow Representative Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) lead and look at ways to punish the league through legislation. Strip the MLB of antitrust protections and rescind taxpayer dollars for brand new stadiums.
Only when the MLB fears the Right more than it fears the Left will we be able to enjoy a ballgame once again. Until then, play baseball with your family instead of watching millionaires play it on your TV.
I quit the BLM baseball league a number of years ago due to the league trying to be a miniature version of the showboating NBA. Now they both suck.
Doesn’t radio “attendance” still give them ratings and draw in advertising dollars?
Boycotting is only one part of a three-part strategy that would be necessary if Americans are to cripple MLB. The other two parts:
1) the anti-trust exemption must be removed from MLB. This will not occur in the present Congress, so pressure would have to come from state legislatures, in a two-pronged process of passing a Constitutional amendment requiring a universal anti-trust addition to the interstate commerce clause, and in suing MLB to have its exemption removed by the courts. Both of these would take a while, but if handled correctly they could both tie up MLB in having to defend itself judicially and legislatively, hurting the teams in the pocketbook.
2) Cities and states would have to begin refusing to provide any funds or services to their MLB teams. This won’t happen in blue cities like NY, Boston, Chicago, or LA, but it could be used to cripple teams in red or purple areas that already have financial issues. To use a personal example, have Florida, along with the appropriate cities, refuse any further support for the Rays and the Marlins, allowing them to either go out of business or move elsewhere. If all red states gave up their MLB teams, the league would shrink both in number and in area—a blue-state-only league of 15 teams would be far less impressive than an all-country league of 30 teams.
This is war, in every way except blood. We should act accordingly.
Corporation and organizations are pretty much agnostic when it comes to politics, but they are like animal who react to things that might cause them pain by keeping them at bay.
Imagine if you’re a ceo enjoying a fat life and having a mob of angry thugs invade your company and your home and busting it up and setting it on fire. You’d want to avoid it worse than the plague. So if they tell you to jump, you say high high.
So right now they see the left causing them way more pain than the right if they don’t publicly toe their line.
If we want corporations to come to our side we need to scare the shit out of those CEOs even more than what the left is doing.
The other thing that might work is for us to take on the left and reduce them to a point where their threats no longer scare anyone.
We’re not doing either. And right now we need to do both.
Maybe our tactics should change meaning show up at games and hang up a sign that says something like Manfred has got to go And calling radio talk shows and talking about moving the All Star game and every time baseball is brought up by anyone talk about the All Star game and maybe we should buy only two Jerseys those being Curt Schilling and the other Kayleigh McEnany’s husband. That would send a message.
“I actually agree with that. It’s like a woman saying she’s boycotted Playboy magazine her entire life.”
That may be true of Freepers but not of most Republicans. Sports fan were always been more to the center right than center left and I think that is still true today. I’m sure most that attend/watch those games do so out of an addiction that they can’t or refuse to give up.
Hell, even here in Freeper land you still see postings by people addicted to football!
Good luck with that. I haven't been a fan of MLB since the strike in 1994 ... and I don't know any MLB fans today who would even care enough to boycott anything.
It seems most people are inert morons. I've slowly lost touch with almost anyone with a pathological fixation on any forms of vicarious entertainment -- especially on TV.
Well. Filling up the stadium sends a message. I get the message that Texans don’t care.
That’s a message.
I expect a major protest during the All-Star Game in Denver in July. G*d help us all if we have a nasty confrontation. 🙄
I’d like for MLB to respect Americans.
But they’re not going to do that, because MLB is “woke.”
So, ignore them. Don’t sneak a peek on cable TV. Don’t turn on that radio.
And remember this: While MLB owns its leagues, trademarks and properties, they don’t own baseball.
I’ve been boycotting them my entire life, so I’m good.
Baseball and Golf are incredibly, nightmarishly boring.
MLB is upset democrats won’t be able to easily pad the ballot box with phantoms. Give them a taste of their own medicine. VOTE! Vote in the all-star balloting for the absolute worst possible players at every position. Tell your friends to do the same. Tell them to tell their friends to do the same. Vote hundreds of times. Give them the pieces of s_ _ _ democrats gave America.
I couldn’t boycott them any harder!
I still don;t see how a franchise can stay in business without selling tickets. Even with TV income, etc. That said...the teams now days don’t know how to base run or field, with a few exceptions. I was shocked when I turned a game on a while ago and realised the players had extremely poor fundamentals. Just change it to Home Run Derby and stop being pretentious!
I have recently started watching the Japanese league. I think even thought they’re not steroid monsters and can’t hit the ball that far, their fundamentals are on par with MLB overall! Kinda like old time baseball!
If you want to talk about cities supporting their teams do not forget that Atlanta built two Stadiums for their team in real recent years and that should never be forgotten.
What is MLB, and why should I care?
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